Let’s document the context of the Russia-Ukraine war
1990: US Secretary of State, James Baker guarantees Gorbachev that NATO will not expand “one inch to the east”.
1994: Clinton administration adopts policy to isolate Russia from the Black Sea through gradual NATO expansion to the East. Policy was followed by all subsequent American presidents
1999: 3 countries join NATO – Hungary, Poland, Czech Rep
2004: US-influenced “colour revolution” in Ukraine
2004: 7 countries join NATO – Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia
2008: NATO announces intention to admit Ukraine as a member. Putin makes statement at same summit that Ukraine was a ‘red line’.
2009: 2 countries join NATO – Albania, Croatia
2014: Maidan coup engineered by US in which pro-Russian Ukrainian President Yanukovych was ousted in favour of a pro-NATO candidate.
2014: Start of Ukrainian civil war between pro-Russian separatists in Donbas and Ukrainian govt.
2014: Russia annexed Crimea (to ensure continued Russian access to Black Sea).
2016: Substantial US financial and military assistance to Ukraine, totalling $1.95b plus its de facto integration into NATO structures. Meanwhile, US and other Western countries armed and trained the Ukrainian military, and reaffirmed the commitment that Kyiv would join the Western Alliance.
2017: Montenegro joins NATO.
2019: Trump administration unilaterally withdraws from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Fearing that this boosted the risk of a US first strike, Moscow sought new, mutual restrictions and moratoria on missile deployments. The US dismissed these proposals.
December 19th, 2019: Zelenskyy and Putin sign Minsk agreements. Minsk agreements aimed to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine and grant a measure of self-government to Donbas.
2020: North Macedonia joins NATO.
May 2020: NATO conducts a live-fire training exercise inside Estonia, 70 miles from Russia
2020: Zelensky signals that he had no intention of implementing Minsk agreements. In mid-July 2020, Zelensky proposes holding local elections throughout Ukraine, yet the plan excluded Donbas which was supposed to have new elections under Minsk
Feb 2021: Zelensky shuts down 3 television networks tied to his main political opposition, which advocated better ties with Russia. A Zelensky aide disclosed that this crackdown was “conceived as a welcome gift to the Biden administration,” which offered its endorsement of Zelensky’s effort to “counter Russia’s malign influence.”
Mar 2021: Biden administration approves $125m Ukraine military package. Ukraine’s National Security & Defense Council approves strategy to recover all of Crimea from Russian control, including by force. Military leaders also announced that they were ready to retake Donbas by force, with the help of NATO allies
2021: By end of 2021, Ukraine had Europe’s largest non-Russian standing land force, fully prepared for large-scale conflict
Feb 2022: Unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine
Dec 2022: Former German Chancellor Merkel admits the Minsk agreement was merely to buy time for Ukraine’s arms build-up
‘There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think.’ – Ayn Rand
Did you know that, since 2021, government agencies are legally allowed to plant evidence and produce false witness statements?
The UK Covert Human Intelligence (Criminal Conduct) Act (2021) – known as ‘CHIS’ – gives 14 government agencies the mandate to commit crimes with impunity under certain circumstances.
The government bodies covered by the protections of the Act range from the intelligence services, the police and the military to the Department of Health and Social Care, the Food Standards Agency and, ironically, the Ministry of Justice. All can commit crimes against the people if the circumstances demand it.
What are the permissible circumstances?
“in the interests of national security; for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or of preventing disorder; or in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom”.
There is no express limit within the Act on the type of criminal conduct that can be authorised. In theory, agents or officers of the state could engage in torture, rape or even murder. An amendment to exclude such serious crimes from the protections of the Bill was defeated.
The Act was a response to a case where MI5 narrowly won a ruling that its undercover agents lawfully broke the law(!)
The CHIS Act was subsequently rushed through parliament to ensure that the law on law-breaking was clarified. The act explicitly makes authorised conduct ‘lawful for all purposes’
Furthermore, the CHIS Act gives agents of the State immunity from prosecution and so, even if you had a watertight case proving State crimes, there would be no defendant to bring it against. Of course, there’s no chance that such powers could ever be abused!
Another blow to the increasingly risible adage that no one is above the law.
Voltaire quotes are always worth having in your back pocket. Here are 5 that are particularly relevant to where we are now:
‘Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’ – this was very evident during lockdowns. The majority, suffering from a ‘mass formation’, started to harbour violent thoughts towards the minority, prompted by the media and other epistemological organisations. And let’s not forget the atrocity of forcing people to take an experimental medical treatment for which the harms hugely outweighed the benefits.
‘It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.’ – all of the organs of The Establishment have the same views on all of the main topics of the day. Despite the mantra of ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’, diversity of opinion can result in ostracism and even jail in today’s society.
‘The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.’ – the body can do amazing things when it isn’t being poisoned.
‘Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all.’ – Doctors can’t possibly read all the research so they follow the guidance provided for them by Big Pharma and centralised health agencies (who are funded by Big Pharma).
‘It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.’ – fools don’t know they are in chains.
In short: be sceptical, do you own research and don’t follow the herd.
Let’s explore how Net Zero is going to cause hyperinflation in the UK.
Think of the economy as a pyramid comprised of 3 layers.
The bottom layer is occupied by energy and resources. These are the building blocks of an economy. Goods and services appear in the middle layer of the pyramid. These are the products of an economy. Money is at the top of the pyramid. Money has no value in and of itself, it is merely a tool that facilitates the exchange of energy, resources, goods and services.
Each layer is dependent on the layer below for its existence. (Note that resources are also dependent on energy to extract and process them).
Therefore, the size of an economy is directly related to the amount of energy and resources a country uses. (There are no rich ‘low energy’ countries).
Net Zero is going to drastically reduce the UK’s access to energy and resources. The inevitable end point of Net Zero will be to stop the exploration, extraction and import of fossil fuels. The Climate and Nature Bill having its 2nd reading in parliament today explicitly states this in section 2.6.d:
‘d) ensuring the end of the exploration, extraction, export and import of fossil fuels by the United Kingdom as rapidly as possible.’
Currently, gas and imports comprise 50% to 70% of UK energy use. Other energy sources will not be able to make up this shortfall.
Therefore, Net Zero will cause a sharp fall in the UK’s access to energy and resources which will lead to a sharp fall in the availability of goods and services.
Inflation is caused either by too much money supply OR too few goods. When both conditions apply the result is hyperinflation. The only way to avoid hyperinflation would be to reduce the money supply in line with the reduction in energy use but there are no indications that the governnent plans to do this.
I’ll let you do your own research as to what happens to a country undergoing hyperinflation.
On covid19 reflection day, perhaps you will join me in a little experiment in critical thinking
Is it technically possible for a government to employ psychological manipulation to scare the population into believing that a non-existant new pathogen is killing people in large numbers?
This isnt a question about motives, just a question about the power of propaganda.
To do so, I suggest that the following steps would need to be taken: • Restrict assembly so that people cannot easily share. information about the pathogen. • Engineer a high initial death rate associated with the virus. • Blame the new pathogen for the high death rate. • Remove certain safeguards to make it easier for deaths to be attributed to the new pathogen • Report that hospitals are overloaded with patients suffering from the new pathogen. • Make available a test kit for the new pathogen that records a high rate of false positives. • Declare that recipients of false positive tests are ‘asymptomatic carriers / transmitters’. • Silence / censor experts who have alternative explanations for what is going on and how it is being handled. • Instigate round-the-clock fear propaganda via nudge units and media
Entirely by accident, the UK government took all of the steps described above.
High initial death rate: The mortality rate for 2020 was unexceptional. The only mortality spike occurred in March / April which coincided with elderly and vulnerable people with complex health issues people being denied hospital care while in care homes:
As a result of these factors, deaths in care homes were 195% higher in April 2020 compared to the previous 5 year average.
Plus, doctors were encouraged to add c19 to the death certificate if there was any suspicion that c19 could have been a factor. This would have artificially boosted the c19 death toll.
Remove safeguards: The process for death certification was relaxed so that only 1 doctor needed to sign the death certificate and, as long as the notes had been read, the doctor did not need to have seen the patient.
Contrary to what we were told, figures show that hospitals were the quietest in living memory. In the 3 months of April to June, hospital bed occupancy was 63% (34,140 empty beds)
Hence, all those TikTok videos of dancing medical staff.
Pathogen test kit:
The PCR test is not a diagnostic tool. It can find a gene sequence it is looking for but it cannot determine whether the sequence is active nor inactive. Nor can it determine if the viral sequence exists in sufficient quantities to make you ill. Plus, countries were accused of turning up the PCR amplication up to over 40 cycles which makes the test highly sensitive. Kary Mullis, the inventor of PCR, said:
Using PCR tests with a high amplication rate is guaranteed to produce high numbers of positive cases which led to the interpretation of ‘asymptomatic transmission’.
I’m not saying that is what happened. I’m merely asking, as an exercise in Critical Thinking, if a government could fake a pandemic.
I suspect it is technically possible and we must always be alert to that possibility.
A private members bill known as the ‘Climate and Nature’ Bill is currently wending its way through the British parliament. The objective of the Bill is to save the planet. To do so, the Bill outlines a series of open-ended, ill-defined measures that the government can co-opt in order to do whatever it (the govt) deems necessary to save the planet. I will post a summary of the Bill in my next post. However, for the purposes of this post, I am focusing on the Bill’s determination to drastically reduce the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions and what this will mean for the UK’s ability to produce enough energy to support the economy. My MP, Marie Goldman, who likes to think of herself as a ‘Good Person’ and wants others to see her as a ‘Good Person’, supports this Bill. As such, I had no choice but to contact her, by email, in an effort to prompt Goldman into some critical thinking. Below, I document my email exchanges with Marie Goldman. There are 3 messages, so far: 2 from me with 1 response from MG.
First email from Atticus Fox to Marie Goldman on 11th Jan 2025:
‘Dear Ms Goldman, Can you explain why you support the Climate and Nature Bill? Can you include in your answer details on the effects you believe the Bill will have on British industry and construction? What effects do you think this Bill will have on British living standards? What effects do you think this Bill will have on domestic energy consumption? What effects do you think this Bill will have on food production and food import? What effect do you think this Bill will have on Global temperatures? Regards, Xxxxxxxx’
Atticus: I dashed off the email above without much thought. I hadn’t even read the Bill at this stage. I expected that Goldman would respond with a pre-scripted boilerplate response so I didn’t want to invest a lot of time and effort.
First response from Marie Goldman to Atticus Fox on 17th Jan, 2025:
‘Dear Xxxxxxx, Thank you for your kind email regarding the Climate and Nature Bill. Climate change is an existential threat. Soaring temperatures leading to wildfires, floods, droughts and rising sea levels are affecting millions of people directly, and billions more through falling food production and rising prices. Urgent action is needed – in the UK and around the world – to achieve net zero and avert catastrophe. At the same time, sky-high energy bills are hurting families and businesses, fuelling the cost-of-living crisis. Russia’s assault on Ukraine has reinforced the need to significantly reduce the UK’s dependence on fossil fuels and invest in renewables – both to cut energy bills and to deliver energy security. I be (Sic) in attendance of the second reading [AF: 2nd reading of the Bill scheduled for 24th Jan] – it’s already in my diary. I look forward to encouraging its progress in Parliament. Many thanks for your correspondence. Kind regards, Marie Goldman MP Member of Parliament for Chelmsford’
Atticus: As expected, boilerplate. Not engaging with any of my questions. In the meantime, I had read an interesting analysis on Substack, by Richard Lyon, that laid out the relationship between a country’s energy use and its economy. I decided to respond to Goldman using the Lyon piece as a sub-structure.
My response to Goldman on 22nd Jan, 2025:
‘Dear Marie, Thank you for your response. By way of rejoinder, I would like to point out an economic truth: the debt-based economy of the UK is wholly dependent on growing the economy each year by an amount sufficient to generate enough tax receipts to keep funding the expanding commitments of the UK government. That economic growth is entirely driven by the UK’s energy production. Net Zero will result in government bankruptcy. Let me explain. The UK economy – any country’s economy – is a pyramid whereby energy and resources comprise the bottom layer of the pyramid that supports the rest of the economy. Thus, there is a direct relationship between the quantity of energy and the size of the economy. For example, a low energy country cannot support a car industry (nor any other kind of industry for that matter). Nor could such a country build 1.5m homes in the next 4 years. Mud huts, maybe. Hence why there are no rich ‘low energy’ countries. A ‘rich’ country that decimates its energy levels will become a poor country very quickly. And that economic shrinkage will not happen in a calm and tidy manner. We are talking about hyperinflation as the value of money becomes worthless because there is not enough energy to support the goods and services that make a country rich. (Lots of money tokens chasing far fewer good and services). Pensions would be wiped out. People would freeze to death through not being able to heat their homes. (Cold weather kills 15 times more people than hot weather). Money would flee the country, ports and airports would shut due to lack of traffic, cars would disappear from the roads and even local travel would become difficult. Starvation would ensue. Starvation is always a risk in a country that only produces half of the food that it needs. However, without the fertiliser derived from hydrocarbons, even less food would be produced in the UK. The CAN Bill indicates that the carbon emissions of imports will be included in calculations suggesting that food imports would drastically reduce (not that a country undergoing hyper-inflation would be able to afford imports). There would be no power to run sewage treatment plants or hydrocarbon-based chemicals to clean the water. (The irony is that wind turbines are made from hydrocarbons, further impacting on the ‘debit’ side of our carbon emissions ledger. The energy needed to make both turbines and solar panels can only come from fossil fuels. Wind power and solar energy does not have the energy density necessary to manufacture these items, hence the loss of industry referred to above – the energy produced by a windmill cannot build a windmill). The CAN Bill is all about significantly reducing the amount of high density energy the UK produces in a short space of time. The only possible outcome of de-industrialising Britain is to take Britain’s economy back to pre-industrial levels. 200 years of progress in health and living standards would be undone in less than 20 under conditions of extreme social turmoil. In this email I have only focused on the economic consequences of CAN as these consequences alone are more than enough to contest this Bill. As this email is already longer than intended I shall ignore the egregious assaults on property rights and personal autonomy that are also built into the Bill. The subject of a subsequent email, perhaps. Net Zero will eventually collapse under the weight of its own monumental scientific and economic illiteracy. I beseech you to understand the consequences of this Bill before too much irreparable harm is done. This email is my evidence that I tried to warn you. The CAN Bill will do more damage to the well-being of this country than Climate Change ever will. If you have evidence that contradicts the narrative I have outlined above, I would welcome the opportunity to review it. Best regards, Xxxxxxxx’
Atticus: I will add Marie’s response in a future post.
By ‘Leftist’ I mean the people from the Far Left who are apologists for migrant rape gangs and push for the destruction for Western culture at every opportunity.
By ‘Rightist’ I mean everyone else.
I’ve had hundreds of on-line ‘debates’ with Leftists over the years. As you will know, it is very hard to debate a Leftist because they debate in a very different way from Rightists.
We think that someone will change their minds when presented with facts and logic that counter their argument, but while this approach will work against a Rightist, it won’t work against a Leftist because Leftists do not use facts to build their political philosophy in the first place. A Leftist’s philosophy is entirely built on emotion and so facts have no power over them.
This was brought home to me a couple of years ago when I was having a face-to-face debate with a Leftist in a pub – probably not a good idea – and I stated something the Leftist shrugged off. To this, I pointed out that what I had just said was not just an opinion, it was a fact. To which the Leftist, in an unguarded – drunk! – moment responded ‘I don’t give a f*** about facts’.
It’s easy to think pub-talk cannot be taken seriously but his words were an eye-opening moment for me. Sometimes, rarely, a Leftist will tell the truth!
Leftists will always dismiss facts as being manipulated or biased or funded by bad actors. Or the facts are out of context. Or that other influencing factors have not been taken into account. A Leftist will always find a way to dismiss facts therefore leaving facts with no power.
Lesson #1: don’t employ facts against a Leftist as they don’t cut through the Leftist’s emotional motivations.
A Leftist will make their mind on a political issue based on which perspective will make them feel good about themselves and support their self-identification as a ‘good person’. This binary approach is a very simplistic way to approach complex issues. A Rightist would never think so simplistically because a Rightist knows that things are always more complicated than a Leftist would make out. However, for a Leftist, everything is either black or white and people are either good or Nazis.
A Rightist considers the Bigger Picture. In this way the Rightest is building up a deeper understanding of the issue in a way that considers a wider set of implications. By comparison, the Leftist’s binary consideration of an issue is very child-like.
This is Lesson #2: A Leftist has a very child-like understanding of political issues and this must be taken into account when debating with them.
As a result of seeing themselves as good people, Leftists see themselves as moral people. Whilst they see everyone else as motivated by greed or hate, only they are motivated by doing ‘what is right’. As a result, in any debate, the Leftist will immediately take up the moral high-ground. This is what makes Leftists virtually undefeatable in a debate. It’s hard to win the argument by pointing out cost/benefit ratios – or whatever other logic the Rightist is using to make his case – when the Leftist is appealing to the ‘morally right thing to do’. In order to gain parity, the Rightist also needs to present his case in moral terms. Proposing a moral alternative is the only way to introduce uncertainty on the side of the Leftist. If you’re not coming at this from a moral perspective, the Leftist will dismiss you out of hand as a bad person. However, if can can convince them that your approach to political philosophy is the same as theirs, they lose their power. They don’t know how to respond. Their usual weapons of ad hominens cannot be used against someone who is making a moral argument.
Lesson #3: find a way to present your position as a moral argument. This is like Kryptonite for Leftists. They find it hard to tear down a moral argument. This doesn’t mean that they will agree with you. No, their emotional position is deeply embedded but they will find it hard to argue with you.
The other thing about Leftists that can be used to your advantage is that they see themselves as anti -Establishment. I find it bizarre that they still think they are sticking it to ‘the man’ when they have adopted the Establishment position on every single issue of the day. Rightists are now the real anti- Establishmentists and this can be used to our advantage.
Lesson #4: Position your argument as being the anti-Establishment position. This renders Leftists useless because they will find it hard to argue with you without being seen as pro-Establishment (which they definitely will not want to be seen doing).
You have probably heard of the Logical Fallacy known as ‘Appeal to Authority’ whereby someone asserts that a claim is true simply because an authority figure or expert said it is true, without providing additional evidence or reasoning. Well, I have come up with a twist on this that scores points against Leftists. My version is the ‘Appeal to Minority’ whereby I direct the Leftist to a minority person that agrees with my position on the subject. As we know, Leftists find it very difficult to criticise minorities – only bigots do that. This means the argument is strengthened by the addition of the minority comment with very little downside.
Lesson #5: Use ‘Appeal to Minority’ to bolster your argument whilst enjoying watching the Leftist navigate the minefield you have just dropped in front of them.
NOTE: The minority person used cannot be anyone that breaches Lesson #6, below.
Finally, there is just one more lesson.
Lesson #6: Do not reference terms / people that are triggering to Leftists.
Even if you have followed the other 5 lessons you can still lose the debate if you use a ‘dog whistle’ term that Leftists associate with the ‘Far Right’. Examples of such references include Tommy Robinson; cultural differences where the difference is negative for a non-white culture; Trump (obviously); any Right wing media outlet; any Right wing politician; any Right wing journalist. I was even recently witness to a Leftist claiming a moral victory because somone in the debate had referenced ‘Elon Musk’. (They clutched their pearls and said they couldn’t believe they were in a debate where someone had referenced Musk! I kid you not!)
Some will say that following these 6 lessons means playing by ‘their’ rules. That it is an example of ceding ground to Leftists in the culture wars. I agree, it is, but you must remember Lesson #2: Leftists are child-like. They are not capable of sophisticated arguments. You wouldn’t debate a child in the same way as an adult. You would try to come down to their level in order for them to understand your point. It’s the same for Leftists. Plus, it makes it extra fun to beat them at their own game.
You will never change a Leftist’s mind, of course, but you can mute them to a large extent and you will gain moral victories
Although I drew these lessons only recently, I’ve already had much more success than previously. Just this week I had 4 Leftists going at me on the subject of cultural differences at play in Northern UK towns and none of them were able to get a bite out of me. (My moral argument was for the victims and, of course, I adopted a strong anti-establishment position). One by one, they all gave up. They knew they had lost. They kept impuning my motives but I stayed tight, keeping to these 6 lessons.
I recently had an opportunity to talk to a farmer of my acquaintance about her feelings for the future of farming in light of the UK government’s current overhaul.
She expressed concerns but also felt that changes were needed. Later that day she forwarded me an email that she had recently received from the Pathways project that provided lots of links to a recent food seminar that had recently taken place. The farmer added the following covering note:
‘I thought I’d share this newsletter, lots of organisations out there doing good and they use the phrase ‘farming evolution’ and that’s very much how I’d describe it. Just another part of the continual evolution of everything whether it be for good or bad… I can only influence/control/react how I can with the resources I have at that time…’
In response, I organised my own thoughts about the governments intentions for farming that gave a less optimistic perspective.
This was my response:
Hi Xxxxx, Yes, a good talk. It was good to see that you, a farmer, are not overly pessimistic about the changes on the horizon. Here are my thoughts on what is going on. This is the first time I have shared my thoughts on farming and the first person to read them will be an actual farmer so I am aware I am almost certainly teaching my grandmother to suck eggs! I expect to receive a lot of corrections but here goes:
My concern is that changes are being forced on the system of farming that will put many farmers out of business and lead to much less food production in Britain. Farming is a complex system that has evolved to where it is now over hundreds of years. Now the government has decided to design a new farming system. That’s a red flag for a start – whenever the government thinks it can take a complex system and re-design it, it never works out well. And if the govt were merely trying to optimise the existing system for the benefit of farmers, that would still be something that the govt would likely mess up with bureaucracy and inflexibility. However, the govt is not tweaking the existing system for the benefit of farmers. Instead the govt is attempting something much more ambitious than that: they are attempting to implement a brand new system based on a new ideology – controlling the Earth’s climate – for the benefit of society at large. In this new system, food production is not placed first and foremost, political ideology is. Trying to optimise farming around a new model with different financial incentives whilst adhering to low carbon ideology is a root and branch overhaul of a complex system. There are too many moving parts and the govt is guaranteed to mess it up on an epic scale. And farmers will almost certainly come off worse because none of this is being done for their benefit, nor is it being done in consultation with farmers. As far as I can tell, it’s all being worked out by technocrats. Take your email from the Pathways Project, for example: not a farmer in sight, that I could see. My take is that these are technocrats wanting to put their theories into practise. What could possibly go wrong?! Were any farmers in attendance at the Action Task Force seminar? Did any farmers present their persoective to the assembled experts? The whole redesign does not appear to be collaborative, it seems like a top-down implementation. So I can understand why farmers are suspicious of what is going on.
I notice the repeated references to the importance of ‘sustainability’ in the email. I don’t see any references to the importance of producing enough food! Not a good sign. In my experience, ‘sustainability’ is a codeword for ‘restrictions’. Once it is messed up and farmers are forced out of business, those farmers will be lost forever. I think this has the possibility of being a catastrophic blow for farming whose impact will be felt for years to come. And the rest of society will not reap any benefits anyway (unless you think that the UK govt can control the planet’s weather. That’s a whole contentious subject right there). Instead, the odds are that food will be more expensive and many farmers will have been pushed out of the business.
A cynic could suggest that this is part of a deliberate plan to force small farmers out of business in place of more corporate farming. As in other sectors of the economy, more regulation will be introduced which big firms can absorb more easily than small firms. There’s also a suspicion that the govt is using this opportunity to incentivise us to change our eating habits. For example, eating less meat (about which there are endless articles in the mainstream media). So, again, we have additional indications that the new system is not about food production, it’s about ideology. I hope I’m wrong but the portents are not good. I would value your feedback. Am I totally off-track? I have no inside knowledge, all of the above is based on articles I have read together with extrapolating the direction of travel. Some of it is educated guesswork but the message is that we need to be vigilent to ensure that our food security isn’t jeopardised.
I value what you and Xxxxxxx are doing. Long may you continue!
Regards, Atticus Fox
In response, the farmer sent this reply:
Good to chat this morning. It’s certainly a minefield out there, I try and bring it back to simplicity whenever I can and delve more when I have the headspace/energy/interest. Currently, I think I need a break from it!!
I thought I’d share this newsletter, lots of organisations out there doing good and they use the phrase ‘farming evolution’ and that’s very much how I’d describe it. Just another part of the continual evolution of everything whether it be for good or bad… I can only influence/control/react how I can with the resources I have at that time.
Enjoy the sun today, see you soon. Xxxxx
This is email that the farmer had forwarded to me. I have not included working links but I am sure you could find them online using the information included:
Begin forwarded message:
Agriculture Policy in a Changing World | Spring 2024 On March 7, the For Sustainable Food Forum convened with over 70 in attendance, serving as a pivotal platform for discussing sustainable practices within the European livestock sector.
The forum aimed to tackle environmental impacts while addressing the growing societal demand for safe, nutritious, and affordable meat and dairy products.
Recognising the urgency for change in both the industry and broader society, PATHWAYS presented innovative strategies throughout the day to pave the way for a sustainable future in European agriculture. Participants highlighted comprehensive recommendations such as Performance-Based Payments (PBP) within the Collective Agricultural Policy (CAP), an emission reduction mechanism, and the diversification of protein sources to align with climate goals and nutritional needs.
The event was a resounding success thanks to all attendees, both in-person and online!
For further details and highlights, visit our website, and check out the photo album here.
Project Updates
Towards Climate Smart Livestock Systems
In recognising the multifaceted role of livestock systems in Africa, efforts must prioritise livelihoods, adopt a systems approach, and address climate change impacts, while considering disparities in distribution and proposing sustainable solution for both industrial and agrarian food systems. Read more here.
Sustainable livestock systems: What does this mean?
Sustainability within the European livestock sector presents a multifaceted challenge, requiring tailored solutions, innovative practices at the farm level, and meaningful engagement of young farmers to steer the course of agricultural evolution. Read more here.
Trade-Offs for the Future of Livestock Husbandry
In view of making livestock husbandry more sustainable, Catherine Pfeifer explains the need of evaluating trade-offs between efficiency, environmental footprint, and animal welfare. Watch here.
A Holistic Approach for Sustainable Food Systems
Pietro Goglio from the University of Perugia, Italy, explores the holistic approach employed in the PATWAYS project, the importance of agronomy in addressing livestock-crop interactions and how PATHWAYS is employing principles of circularity for enhanced sustainability in livestock systems. Watch here. Policy Recommendations
Following the event’s thorough discussions, this policy brief summarises the main points reached during the forum storyline sessions regarding the real PATHWAYS – the possible futures for agriculture in Europe. Read more here via LinkedIn. Upcoming Events
5th Global Food Security Conference April 9 – 12 Leuven, Belgium
S-LCA 2024 May 28 – 31 Curitiba, Brazil
The 75th EAAP Annual Meeting September 1 – 5 Florence, Italy
LCA Food 2024 September 8 – 12 Barcelona, Spain Learn more Related projects
The farmer responded as follows:
You’re certainly informed, it’s great that you are so aware to it all.
You’re right the mainstream media has an awful lot to answer for, and not just when it comes to food, it’s so hard to avoid all the additional influence we are subject to. The food system is incredibly delicate and complex, the more I understand of it the more I can see how it’s got to where it has.
Farmers may not be the ones setting new policies but they are called upon to consult and I do feel it’s collaborative but maybe not equally favourable to all those involved. However, your concerns are very real and farmers are most certainly not the priority of governments but I don’t think they can be with so many factors involved in the food system.
I think you’re right, ’sustainability’ does mean ‘restrictions’ but I see that as a positive thing. For example, food seasonality and understanding that strawberries shouldn’t be on the shelves the entire year. Only having them available when they’re in season would be a ‘restriction’ but ultimately more ’sustainable’. That’s a very top level example but that’s how I see it being driven, producers have to deliver what customers want but also on their own terms based upon their values and what they believe, as producers, to be sustainable. That for me personally is less about conforming to the ideology of changing the earth’s climate but more about us, as humans, generally consuming less.
I think policies are always generalised and quite overwhelming because of that. They will always be open to interpretation and managed as per each farm sees fit. As for farms being lost, yes there is that danger and it is a real possibility but, this isn’t a new thing. Smaller farms who haven’t adapted have had to sell up but often to larger farming businesses, all still independent, farms that have been in families for generations are given new leases of life with fresh sets of eyes.
It’s bloody complicated and there is only so much I/we can do, ultimately it’s up to farmers and consumers to educate themselves. It’s certainly a time full of change for the agricultural industry, I just hope farmers aren’t burying their heads in the sand and can adapt with the changes to come. Only time will tell .
Around the time in March 2020 that lockdowns were imposed in response to covid, an Iceberg meme was widely shared on social media. The picture conveyed the message that lockdowns were going to have all sorts of negative consequences that were being ignored in the myopic focus on covid deaths.
90% of an iceberg lies beneath the surface
There was no cost benefit analysis of lockdowns done at the time because governments wanted to introduce lockdowns. Now, 4 years later, we are in a position to perform a retrospective cost benefit analysis by quantifying the positive and negative consequences of the lockdowns.
Taking each ‘below the water line’ consequence of lockdowns in turn…
Unemployment:
The lockdowns of 2020 resulted in the UK’s worst recession in the history of industrial capitalism – a fall in economic output not seen since the Great Frost of 1709.
Speaking in October 2020 Jonathan Athow, the ONS’s deputy national statistician for economic statistics, said there had been a “sharp increase” in those out of work and job hunting since March.
“Overall employment is down about half a million since the pandemic began and there are particular groups who seem to be most affected, young people in particular,” he told the BBC’s Today programme.
“[Of those out of work] about 300,000 are aged 16-24, so about 60% of the fall in employment… that’s really disproportionate.”
Yet there was a quick bounceback in unemployment numbers. As the graph below shows, by September 2022, the unemployment rate was lower than before the lockdowns. We see the lockdown unemployment blip taking unemployment from 3.9% to 5.5% and then falling rapidly. That blip would have been very stressful for everyone who lost their job during that time. The blip was entirely the result of the government’s lockdown policy.
Let’s not forget the govt fudges the unemployment stats by excluding those deemed economically ‘inactive’
However, it’s not all good news: as of January 2023 the UK still has about 200,000 more people out of work than in December 2019. It seems counter-intuitive that the unemployment can be lower yet the workforce is smaller. That’s because some people have chosen to be economically inactive, perhaps by taking early retirement. These may well be people who would have preferred to continue working but having lost their jobs found it difficult to find another. That’s 200,000 people who are no longer contributing tax revenue.
A 2014 study in Social Science and Medicine by Timothy J. Halliday showed that a 1% rise in the unemployment rate raises the risk of dying by 6% over the following year.
Let’s not forget the impact lockdowns had on small businesses.
SMEs account for 50 percent of the total revenue generated by UK businesses and 44 percent of the labour force. During lockdowns many SME’s were forced to shutter. Large firms, on the other hand were classed as ‘essential businesses’ and were allowed to continue trading. Sounds like the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
What was the impact of these policies on SME’s?
As of 1 January 2021, there were 6.5 per cent fewer private companies than in 2020. This was the largest fall in business population since before 2000.
The bulk of these closed companies will have been SME’s.
The Business Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Survey (Wave 17) found 17.2% of micro businesses (fewer than 10 workers) were pausing trade or temporarily closed as of late October 2020 compared with 6.1% of firms with 250 or more workers.
Overall, the UK economy, measured by gross domestic product (GDP), shrank by a record 19.8% in the second quarter (April to June) of 2020, following the start of the first lockdown on 23 March.
According to analysis by the Bank of England, the pandemic reduced cash flows for many companies, with smaller companies “more likely than larger companies to operate in sectors that have been most affected by the shock, such as accommodation and food, arts and recreation, and construction”.
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research has previously warned that the level of GDP was on track to be almost 4 per cent lower in 2025 than it would have been without the lockdowns. The cumulative loss of economic output, it said, would be worth £727 billion over the five-year period.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) October 2020 retail sales publication reported “online sales reaching higher than usual levels over the course of the pandemic”. Online purchases represented 28.5% of total sales in October compared with 20.1% in February.
Conclusion: The wealthy did very well out of lockdowns as they hoovered up government grants and contracts and quantitative easing monies. Plus, big companies were able to continue trading whilst their smaller rivals were shuttered. The result of lockdowns was the biggest transfer of wealth to the top 1% in human history.
Heart Failure / Death by Disease:
A report in The Financial Times on April 26, 2020 referenced an internal British government estimate that ultimately, without mitigation, up to 150,000 people in the UK could die prematurely from other conditions because of the Covid-induced lockdown that put on hold huge numbers of screenings and operations. Yet the band played on.
From March 2020 hospitals pretty much stopped ‘routine’ services. The Lancet published results of a study into the impact of the first UK lockdown on hospital admissions:
‘Admission rates for all three conditions [1) cancer 2) cardiovascular 3) respiratory] fell by 34.2% in England, 20.9% in Scotland, and 24.7% in Wales.’
However, these percentages from the Lancet sound pretty dry. They don’t tell us the numbers involved. Instead, let’s focus on this story from a breast cancer charity:
‘Between March and September 2020, it is estimated that 986,000 women missed regular breast screenings… This will translate into 8,600 women having undetected breast cancer… Breast cancer diagnosed at a later stage can be harder to treat…’
But at least we had all those Doctors and nurses dancing in TikTok videos
Lockdowns will have caused hundreds, maybe thousands, of women to die or become seriously ill with breast cancer. That is the impact of lockdowns on just one disease. Now think of all the other diseases where scans and preventative treatments save lives. This gives an insight into the numbers of people who were the lambs sacrificed to the covid God.
The NHS was created to protect us. Now, we were told we had to protect the NHS.
Pity he didn’t think of that sooner
NHS waiting lists are at record levels. Over seven million patients were waiting to start hospital treatment at the end of September 2022. Over 400,000 had been waiting for over a year. This is more than double the pre-pandemic level.
117,000 people on the National Health Service’s (NHS) multi-million-long waiting lists had died by July 2022. How many of these people would still be alive if the NHS had not transformed into the National Covid Service?
According to YouGov and Eurostat data, one in six UK adults were unable to access a pressing medical examination or treatment over the past year – the highest proportion in Europe.
As far as heart failure is concerned, in June 2012 the British Heart Foundation published data that ‘Nearly 100,000 more deaths involving heart conditions and stroke than usual since pandemic began’. This total equates to 500 additional deaths per week involving cardiovascular disease. Some will say the extra deaths are caused by the record NHS backlogs since the lockdowns. Others will politely suggest the treatment used to innoculate people from covid is responsible. A few will even say that covid is responsible for the extra heart disease without explaining why heart disease deaths have remained high whilst covid rates have collapsed.
And let’s not forget that our immune systems need to be kept fighting fit:
‘Dr Sunetra Gupta explains that society-wide pathogenic avoidance creates an “immunity debt,” a gap in the level of protection that you have developed from previous exposure.
‘Dr. Gupta’s observation is that we evolved with pathogens in a delicate dance in which we share the same ecosphere, both suffering and benefiting from our entanglement with them. Disturbing that balance can wreck the immune system and leave us more vulnerable and sicker than ever before. ‘
Conclusion: The government decided that covid deaths were more important than non-covid deaths. As a result,the number of non-covid deaths caused by cancelled screenings and longer waiting times is already greater than the number of deaths from covid and this differential will continue to grow over the coming years.
Suicides /Mental Health:
Several early warnings were issued also about the mental health costs of lockdown measures with increased loneliness, mental anxiety and emotional distress at job losses, financial stress and forced family separations.
During February 21–March 20, 2021, suspected suicide attempt A&E visits in the US were 50.6% higher among girls aged 12–17 years than during the same period in 2019…
Children and young people are now facing what amounts to a mental health crisis, exacerbated by the pandemic, with around one in six 6-to-16-year-olds now having a probable mental health disorder.
NHS data analysed by the PA news agency show a 39 percent rise in a year in referrals for NHS mental health treatment for under-18s, to 1,169,515 in 2021 to 2022.
This study showed that the percentage of students who had a score which warranted a classification of clinical depression increased from 30% to 44%, and for anxiety increased from 22% to 27% – those students who showed a co-morbidity across the two rose from 12% to 21%. Smartphone addiction levels rose from 39% to 50%. Correlational analysis showed a significant relationship between Smartphone usage and depression and anxiety.
Conclusion: Our governments unleashed a wholly unnecessary campaign of fear in order to convince us that covid was an existential threat. This fear campaign was transmitted to a population isolated by lockdown restrictions. Fear and isolation is not a healthy combination. The heightened levels of anxiety and depression in society that resulted from that campaign will probably never return to pre-lockdown levels.
Addiction:
Record levels of alcohol related deaths in 2020 and 2021.
There were 9,641 alcohol related deaths in the UK in 2021, compared to 7,565 in 2019 – a 27% increase.
In February 2021 the ‘Action on Addiction’ charity says it saw an 86% rise in the number of people seeking help in January 2021 compared with January 2020. The difference is explained by the UK being in lockdown in 2020.
Smartphone addiction levels rose from 39% to 50%. Correlational analysis showed a significant relationship between Smartphone usage and depression and anxiety.
This next article published many more references to the predictions of harm that would be caused, globally, by lockdowns that were ignored by governments.
Conclusion: routine is a positive influence for people. It’s not really a surprise that when people had their routine taken away by lockdowns, they would fill that space with destructive tendencies.
Violence:
In May 2020, Refuge, a charity that runs a domestic abuse helpline, said that over the previous three consecutive weeks it had recorded a 66% increase in calls to its helpline and recorded a 957% increase in web traffic over the previous two weeks.
Conclusion: it is obvious that restricting people to their homes will lead to an increase in domestic abuse. Then, transmitting a fear campaign will only exacerbate the situation.
Famine / Death of Children:
The Covid-19 crisis has doubled the number of people around the world who are facing crisis levels of hunger.
An Oxfam report found that 121 million more people could be “pushed to the brink of starvation this year” as a result of disruption to food production and supplies, diminishing aid as well as mass unemployment.
Conclusion: Lots of low paid non-essential workers were not allowed to work at a time when economic activity collapsed. This is the recipe for hunger.
Education:
Lockdowns forced 500 million children around the world out of school
From select committee report: ‘One 2020 study found that children locked down at home in the UK spent an average of only 2.5 hours each day doing schoolwork, and one fifth of pupils did no schoolwork at home, or less than one hour a day. School closures have been nothing short of a national disaster for children and young people….it is clear that school closures have had a disastrous impact on children’s academic progress, with disadvantaged children and those living in disadvantage areas the worse hit.’
The rapid digitisation of education further widened learning gaps between wealthy and low-income students in the country:
‘An important side-effect of the coronavirus impact is the exposure of the digital divide that exists in the UK. Social mobility and class differences mean that some of the poorest and most disadvantaged children are likely to be affected by a lack of access to remote learning because of technological issues.’
Conclusion: Lots of materials I have read whilst researching this piece refer to the impacts caused by covid19. Let’s be precise here: the impacts were caused by lockdowns, not covid. The impacts were man-made.
Of course, education was heavily affected but it’s not just academic education that suffered. Real-world education suffered massively. Children learn a lot of life-lessons from each other: how to play; how to negotiate; how to win; how to lose; how to persuade; how to kiss etc etc. I think of all the play times our children missed. All the parties they missed. The friends they could have made, but didn’t.
Cost Benefit Analysis
Billionaires did very well out of lockdowns. Coincidently, billionaires were one of the groups pushing for lockdowns.
‘From the start of March [2020] to now [April 27, 2020], the group of billionaires’ total wealth has increased by $308 billion.’
Even the BBC predicted the harm of lockdowns: On May 29, 2020, Zaria Gorvett reported for the BBC Future program that most Covid deaths would be not from the virus but from the collateral damage inflicted by the various lockdown measures. Yet the government pushed on with the destruction for another year.
The bulk of this article focuses on non-quantifiable costs in terms of impacts on people’s lives. Let me now turn my attention to the quantifiable costs…
The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in very high levels of public spending. Current estimates of the cost of Government measures announced so far range from about £310 to £410 billion. This is the equivalent of about £4,600 to £6,100 per person in the UK.
How many lives saved? None. If anything lockdowns led to increased numbers of non-covid deaths. Here’s an article that lays out the results of an Oxford study. The conclusion of the study is that:
‘Severe government measures did little to lower COVID-19 deaths or excess mortality from all causes. Indeed, government measures appear to have increased excess mortality from non-COVID health conditions. Yet the severity of these measures negatively affected economic performance as measured by unemployment and GDP and education as measured by access to in-person schooling.’
Having confirmed that lockdowns have imposed huge costs on our health and wellbeing as a society, let’s now consider the benefits of lockdowns.
What were the benefits? There were none. It has long been known that lockdowns do not prevent the transmission of infectious diseases. Many studies have reached that conclusion. Here is a link to an article that includes further links to the lockdown studies:
Instead of conducting and publishing rigorous cost-benefit analyses, departments and ministries of health turned into Covid-only bureaus, health ministers acted like Covid ministers, and governments were almost corrupted into single-purpose organizations pursuing Zero Covid.
We might not have known exactly how lockdown would play out back in the spring of 2020. But it was obvious to anyone that upending every aspect of our lives would have serious consequences. Yet the governing classes dismissed the risks of lockdown. In fact, most of the elites wanted longer and harder lockdowns than the three we, in England, endured. They thought the most restrictive regime on economic and public life that had ever been devised was not restrictive enough. As such, more lockdowns are on their way: as part of signing up to the WHO’s Pandemic Preparedness Treaty, lockdowns will become a way of life.
‘Massive educational degradation. Economic devastation, by both the lockdowns and now the continuing fiscal nightmare plaguing the nation caused by continuing federal overreaction. The critical damage to the development of children’s social skills through hyper-masking and fear-mongering. The obliteration of the public’s trust in institutions due to their incompetence and deceitfulness during the pandemic. The massive erosion of civil liberties. The direct hardships caused by vaccination mandates, etc. under the false claim of helping one’s neighbor. The explosion of the growth of Wall Street built on the destruction of Main Street.
The clear separation of society into two camps – those who could easily prosper during the pandemic and those whose lives were completely upended. The demonization of anyone daring to ask even basic questions about the efficacy of the response, be it the vaccines themselves, the closure of public schools, the origin of the virus, or the absurdity of the useless public theater that made up much of the program. The fissures created throughout society and the harm caused by guillotined relationships amongst family and friends…’
Yet there are no apologies and no punishments. Politicians say that they were doing the best they could with limited information. Yet any idiot could predict the obvious consequences. The more obvious it became that covid had a low infection fatality rate, the worse the cost benefit ratio of lockdowns became. Yet governments pressed on.
A cynic could suggest that governments wanted the restrictions to be as harsh as possible so that we would eagerly accept the experimental gene therapy that was released at the end of 2020…
I have been wondering recently what happens to the plastic that I put out for recycling. Is it all recycled? There are many types of plastic, some of which cannot be recycled. It occurred to me that the sorting all of the plastics into various types would be probably have to be done manually and, therefore, the cost of sorting huge amounts of plastic waste would be huge. I had a suspicion that not all plastics are sorted and that not all recyclable plastic is recycled.
In my quest for information, I looked at council’s webpage that explains what happens to our recycling.
The council’s information on the recycling of plastics is as follows (as at 7th Sep, 2023):
Plastics: ‘Once collected, we sort plastics using our MSF. Plastic bottles are generally made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). A re-processing factory cleans and grades the plastic and then turn it into flakes or pellets. They then send the plastic onto a manufacturer, who turns it into more plastic bottles and food packaging.
Other types of plastics are sorted for onward transfer to a variety of different re-processors, and recycled into similar products. ‘Energy from waste’ companies will take any plastic that can’t be recycled into new packaging and turn it into electricity.’
I thought this information was suitably vague. The text infers that all plastics are sorted without actually saying so. I decided to submit a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request to the council to find out more.
I received responses to my questions on October 5th. Full request with responses:
‘My request relates to the processing of plastics collected by Chelmsford City Council. I have read the short section on the CCC website relating to processing of plastics. My 10 questions delve further into the detail and are as follows: 1) ‘Once collected, we sort plastics using our MSF ..’. What is an MSF?
Answer: Material Sorting Facility
2) Does the MSF sort 100% of the plastics collected by CCC?
Answer: No
3) If less than 100% of collected plastics are sorted, could you provide a percentage that is sorted?
Answer: 5% sorted by Chelmsford City Council
4) If less than 100% of collected plastics are sorted, could you provide details as to what happens to the unsorted plastics
Answer: 95% Sent to Essex reclamation in Witham to be sorted. The City Council will only transfer materials to companies who have the appropriate certification and permits from the Environment Agency [who are the regulator] for the material concerned. These environmental permits can be inspected by accessing the public register on the Department for Environment Food & Rural Agency website: https://environment.data.gov.uk/public-register.
5) If the unsorted plastics are divided between multiple other processes, could you provide figures as to how the 100% of unsorted plastics is split between different processes?
Answer: Please see response to question four above.
6) Regarding the sorted plastics using the MSF, where does the sorting take place, Ie in Chelmsford or in Essex or in the UK or Abroad?
Answer: Freighter House Depot, Chelmsford.
7) If the sorting of plastics collected by CCC occurs in a number of different locations, could you provide average percentages of CCC plastic for each location?
Answer: Please see response to question four above.
8) I’d like to know more about the ‘Energy from waste companies’: what % of total plastic collections by CCC are sent to these firms?
Answer: CCC do not directly send plastics to EFW companies.
9) Is only sorted, unrecyclable plastic sent to Energy from Waste firms? Or is unsorted plastics collected by CCC also sent to such firms?
Answer: Approximately 17% of plastics sent to Essex Reclamation are classified as unrecyclable plastic and it is currently sent to SRF [solid recovered fuels] in Germany.
10) Where are the Energy to Waste firms located? UK or Abroad?’
Answer: Please see response to question nine above.
The responses raise further questions:
A) CCC sorts 5% of plastics collected. What does CCC do with plastics that cannot be recycled? Your website states that non-recyclable plastics are sent to EFW firms but your previous response to my FOI states that CCC ‘…do not directly send plastics to EFW companies.’
B) 95% of collected plastics are sent to Essex Reclamation in Witham. Does Essex Reclamation sort all of the plastics it receives?
C) Can you confirm that all recyclable plastics collected by CCC are recycled?
Atticus Fox 